from your science librarian’s desk

“For decades available only to scholars at Cambridge University Library, the private papers of Charles Darwin, one of the most influential scientists in history, can now be seen by anyone online and free of charge. This is the largest ever publication of Darwin papers and manuscripts, totalling about 20,000 items in nearly 90,000 electronic images.

This vast and varied collection of papers includes the first draft of his theory of evolution, notes from the voyage of the Beagle and Emma Darwin’s recipe book.”

Read more about the launch here.

You can browse, search or scan through highlights of the collection on Darwin Online:
1. Browse through whole volumes. Click here.
2. Search the catalogue for specific items. Click here.
3. Highlights and typed items. Click here.

SciFinder provides access to the largest reaction database in the world (CASREACT) with coverage from 1840 to the present. It contains more than 14 million single- and multi-step reactions, about 950 added weekly from patents and journals.

This tip sheet from CAS shows you how to search reactions effectively using some unique tools provided by SciFinder, to be more specific: Functional Groups and Filters. If use effectively, these tools will increase the precision of your queries.

A quick quiz for you?  Since which century has candy corn been around?

Inventors love Halloween, too. Visit the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office’s  “The Little Shop of Halloween Patent & Trademark Horrors” to find out actual inventions with a Halloween theme that have been invented over the years.

For those sky watchers/amateur astronomers,  you probably want to print out your October sky map to spot the spooky Ghost Head Nebula.

For those environment conscious folks (we should all be), celebrate a green Halloween instead of a traditional orange one! The Environmental Defense Fund reminds us annually of tips for celebrating an eco-friendly Halloween.

Read more ghoulish science fun from the Sci-Tech Library Newsletter.

The Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center, at the University of Texas at Austin, has a database of native plants (http://www.wildflower.org/plants/) with some really nice searching options.

You can do the basic searching by name or family (the search function suggests names as you type), there’s also a great search that allows you to search by state, light requirements, soil moisture, duration, bloom characteristics, and color.  Results are presented in a table that includes the scientific and common name of the plants as well as images of the plants.

You may also want to check out the other links from the front page of the Native Plants Database, like the collection of how-to articles, the glossary of botanical terms, and the slide show of popular regional wildflowers.  I’m sure that you’ll find this database is quite useful.

via ResearchBuzz

The Installation Wiki provides comprehensive and free guides to installing software and it’s an open wiki.  The front page has a variety of categories, including open source, content management, Web development, databases, Java, PHP, Microsoft and .NET, and Networking and Telephony.  Choose a category and you’ll get a list of software.   I checked on some of the open source software like Moodle, it has very detailed instruction on how to install and configure the software.

via ResearchBuzz

SciFinder Scholar 2007, the newest version of SciFinder Scholar is here.

I spent a few days last month working with the new version. I loaded the installation file for Windows to the library server. I created a “how to install” page (How to Install SciFinder Scholar 2007 for Windows (for Faculty)) for you to follow along. For those that use SciFinder Scholar Toolbar (for IE), notice that there is a new version of it, you can either install it while you install SciFinder Scholar 2007 (for Windows), or download it from the library server afterwards (check out this page Add-on Software for Windows (IE toolbar, visualization tools to view 3D models)).

For those that using Mac, I generated an archive file of the application package from the disk image file and loaded on the library server. Here’s a very simple instruction on how to install it on your Mac (How to Install SciFinder Scholar 2007 for Mac OS X (for Faculty)).

As far as tutorials go, there are two pdf documents to help you:
Getting Started with SciFinder Scholar 2007 (for Windows)
Getting Started with SciFinder Scholar 2007 (for Mac OS X).

For your convenience, I created a separate page SciFinder Scholar 2007 with all these links on it. If you’re not familiar with SciFinder Scholar, you can learn more about it from the SciFinder Scholar Gateway Page.

There are quite a few new features in this new version, include:

• Categorize references
• Save answers
• Combine answer sets
• Export commercial chemicals records from CHEMCATS ® into Excel
• Explore from substance displays
• Print structures in grid format
• Compatible with Windows Vista™ and Mac OS X

I spent some time this month completely updating the SciFinder Scholar Gateway Page I initially created in 2005 (updated a few times before). Time flies, lots of the contents were related to SciFinder Scholar 2004, which was outdated. All the contents (and links) are now updated, I also changed the page layout a little bit.

Some big (and good) news: Apparently there is a Web version of Sci-Finder in the works, they’ll discuss this in the ACS National Meeting this month. I’m very much looking forward to that Web version, are you?

I blogged about CiteSeer in the past (see CiteSeer, techXtra and computer science literature), a targeted search engine for computer science, info tech, etc.  Now, Dr. Giles (one of the developers of CiteSeer) and his students and colleagues at Penn State have developed another targeted search engine for chemistry.
So what is it?

From the news release:

ChemxSeer, the first publicly available search engine designed specifically for chemical formulae, can sort out when “He” refers to helium and not a person more than nine times out of 10, according to the Penn State College of Information Sciences and Technology (IST) researchers who created the tool.

With the new engine, scientists searching for research on CH4 or methane no longer have to wade through search results about Channel 4 or Chapter 4 as ChemxSeer will only return documents with references to the chemical formula. “Results from our search engine are much more relevant than results returned by popular search engines,” Giles said. “It is one of several cyber tools under development in our lab which will enable better access to and sharing of information and data among scientists and scholars.”

One of many interesting features that make-up ChemxSeer is TableSeer.
From the web site:

This tool automatically identifies tables in digital documents and extracts the contents in the cells of the tables. The contents are stored in a queryable table in a database. TableSeer extracts table metadata, and uses a novel ranking function to search for tables relevant to user queries.

(via ResourceShelf)

This tool (http://www.connotea.org/) aims for clinicians and scientists, but really, anybody can use it.

What you can do:
* Quickly save and organize links to your references
* Easily share references with your colleagues
* References can be accessed from any computer
* Save references with just one click
* Easy to use. Nothing to download and nothing to learn. You can start creating your library today
* Discover new leads
* No cutting and pasting. Save references as you work without having to switch programs
* References can be exported to, or imported from, desktop reference managers
* References can be public, private, or shared with a selected group of colleagues
* No storage limit
* Save links to anything you find on the web

Check it out and see if you like it.